Wisdom Withouth Walls

Main menu

Monthly Archives: September 2013

As we wind down this month’s theme of breath, we hear again from Michelle Willett who shares with us her encounter with God in Ireland. She shares with us the wisdom she encountered one day when God left her breathless.

I’ve had my breath taken away from me numerous times–a first kiss, a never-ending mountain range, a mewing kitten. But there’s only been one time where my breath has been taken in a religious sense. It was this past summer that I visited Ireland for the first time, a country that I had fallen in love with as soon as I stepped off the plane. I was in the town of Cobh, where the Titanic had last seen land before heading off on its perilous journey. I walked around the sites, saw the memorials, and I finished my journey by climbing up the small hill to the local church, which looked out onto the sea.

After walking into the church, I realized I was completely alone. I had never been alone in any house of worship before, and it was a powerful feeling. The statues, at the angels, the saints, the forms of God I was always skeptical of, took my breath away in a way I cannot describe, nor fully comprehend.

I found myself simply sitting at a pew and absorbing the echoing silence around me for over an hour. There was just something about being alone in there, with nothing but myself, a breathing, shivering mass of humanity; there was something about all the stone, glass, and echoes of worshippers come and gone that got to me.

I had never truly believed in a god before; I wanted to believe I wasn’t alone but I just didn’t. Sitting there in that church, I was alone, but I had never felt less so. I couldn’t seem to leave–clearly God and I had some things to talk about. And talk we did, about all the things I had never allowed myself to think and all the things I wished I could fix, both within myself and for those around me. We talked about how I could find and appreciate God in my own way, and how I could fill my own place in the world.

Suddenly a middle-aged couple from Northern Ireland entered the church. The woman strolled down the center aisle for quite a while before spotting me, on my knees, with tear stained cheeks , staring at the rows of saint and angels above me. She gave me a small nod of understanding before moving on. Right then, I knew I was free to go.

I’ve never experienced such a powerful moment before in my life. But I don’t intend to let another twenty-four years pass by without letting God take my breath away again.

Like this:

There were ten of us on this camping trip, all teenage girls with 40-pound army bags weighing down our bony shoulders and clipped across our growing boobs. We would hike, sleep under mosquito nets, and cook porridge over a fire or eat peanut butter smeared on carbohydrates. We had a shovel named Doug for all of our necessities, and I think one roll of toilet paper for all of us for the full two weeks. It was, I believe, what people call “roughing it”.

After days of this, I was tired. I was dirty. I was covered with cuts and bites. I was the last one in the hiking line and my bag towered a foot or so over my head. All the cooking pots and pans were attached to me too, rattling and clanging and bruising together with each step I took. Then, out of nowhere, we had to climb this mountain. This giant ass mountain, all in the brush, no path. I wanted to cry. I was behind, I was small, I was young, I was holding up the group. I wanted to just tumble back with my bag on top of me and lie face down in the dirt until life went away. But the girls held out their blistered hands to help pull me up, bit by bit, making a human chain; and while the pots kept clanging away and my muscles popped and ached, I found myself climbing higher and higher above the treeline.

Photo by: Autumn Elizabeth

When we made it to the top of the mountain, it was raining. The heat rising from the trees hit the cold free air and we were suddenly above the mist, looking down. Everyone was soaked and covered with mud, rivets of water running into our eyes and noses and mouths and shoes. I took off my bag, lifted up my arms to the sky, and laughed and cried and laughed again. Then I ate a snickers bar. It was the best snickers bar I had ever tasted.
I I still remember how deeply I could breathe on top of that mountain, how open it all felt. Somewhere in the silly tears of a teenage girl scratching her way to the top, the feelings of being small, insignificant and worthless had all faded away to the fact that I could do it. I could climb. I had loving people around me. I wasn’t alone. I could do anything.

Like this:

Today’s post is from Michelle Willett. She talks about the importance of breath, even when we ignore it, and how sometimes breath is all we have. So without further ado here’s Michelle on learning to breathe…

I’ve practiced yoga about five years now. I was immediately intrigued by the calm, yet demanding exercise, as well as yoga’s applications as more than just physical exercise. My first teacher was demanding, she never let us back down from difficult poses. When things became overwhelming, she reminded us to breathe through it, and I began to push beyond my former boundaries.

This simple idea has patched up many holes for me. Big and small, from screaming children to arguments with loved ones, there have been times where I reminded myself that I could do it if I just closed my eyes for a moment and focused on my breath.

At the end of a hard day, I often do a simple sun salutation in my room to let myself calm down and have a few moments where I let my mind turn off and focus on nothing more than breath and the life it gives. Such a simple thing, breath, something that you often occurs without a thought. Yet as I travel the world, see so many different things, experience so many different cultures, sometimes my breath is the only consistent companion I have .

Like this:

Today’s post is from Hailey Kaufman. Hailey is a student of philosophy, biology, and religion at Webster University in St. Louis, MO, where she also organizes the school’s secular student group, encourages interfaith dialogue, and furthers scientific understanding. You can find more of her work on Tumblr and on her personal blog.

What are the origins of the word “spirit”? Middle English borrowed it from the Old French word espirit, which could have referred to a variety of things but overall expressed the life essence, the vibrancy of life or something resembling life. Espirit comes from the Latin spiritus, which means breath.

Breath. Let’s think about that for a second. At its heart, to be spiritual means to exchange a life-giving wind with something, in some way. Breath is a fundamental constituent of a living being. When we breathe, we exchange particles with the world around us. To breathe is to ingest one thing for ourselves while chemically changing it into something else, then releasing it back. It’s cyclical, simple but powerful at the same time.

One of my religious studies professors once pointed out to me the resemblance some holy words have to the act of breathing. Amen, a kind of exhale to a prayer. Ra, the Egyptian sun god. Yahweh is a powerful word, so mighty that saying it has historically been taboo.

Think of the way we use the concept of breath in everyday language. We might say something about which we are passionate “breathes life” into us. When we feel existentially stressed or cramped, we say we need to “take a breather” or find “room to breathe” To return to our senses during a panicky moment, we “take a deep breath.”

This all indicates that for us, breath is to some extent associated with a much-needed sense of peace. Whether that peace comes in the form of relaxing us during our suffering, or whether it comes when we feel a connection to something meaningful, the principle is the same: breath is an orienting force, something that stills our worries and brings us into homeostasis.

Gods, prayers, angels, ghosts, fairies, alternative medicine…none of these things are necessary for a sense of spirituality. What is necessary is breath. What fills us with spirit can be anything that leaves us feeling tremendously small yet linked to a larger picture, like a knot in a net. There’s a fire in the heart that stirs us as that breath passes through. Spirituality is nothing more than that fire, and it burns somewhere in all of us.

Like this:

I breathe in the smell of incense at a Catholic church. When I walk into a church, and smell that smell, I relish it. It reminds me of Christmas Eve midnight masses with my family, of Sunday mornings singing at church with my grandmother, of my baby brother’s baptism, and much more.

I breathe in the peace I find in watching the smoke of those incense curl and move and finally drift away. I think of each curl as a prayer being absorbed into the vast holiness of the universe. Each wisp a kindness that lingers just long enough to be noticed.

I breathe in the hurt and disappointment of the temporal nature of all things. Nothing stays except the holy, nothing is forever except the divine. Like smoke we all disappear eventually, leaving only a vague impression of ourselves behind.

I breathe it all in. I breathe in that which is good, that which is mysterious, and that which is painful. I breathe it all in and know that it is the complexity of each breath that makes us human, and the unity of that breathe that shows us the divine.

Like this:

Terri Cooper, founder of Yoga Gangsters, once said that the most important thing we can teach to at-risk youth is how to breathe before acting. This gift, of being able to take a moment before we act, of being able to live beyond fight or flight, is perhaps the greatest gift the universe has given human beings. Yoga Gangsters works with at-risk youth to cultivate that divine gift, and here is your chance to help them.

On Sunday, September 22, 2013 on the 7th Level of the Lincoln Road Parking Complex at 1111 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, Yoga Gangsters will host their 10th Annual Yoga Gangsters Challenge. At this is a fundraising event, over 500 expected yoga practitioners and supporters with breathe through 108 Sun Salutations. Doors open at 9 am, yoga begins at 10:30 am.

If you are not in the South Florida Area, there is also an event on the 28th of September in Las Vegas and if you are not in those places no worries! You can donate now and join the Searching Sophia’s Pockets team. Donate 1$ for each Sun Salutations and then we will all breathe through our Sun Salutations together as a global community of spiritual sojourners.

So join us now and help to give the gift of breath youth across the United States, and maybe eventually, across the world.

Like this:

As we transition from Loss to Breath, here is a prayer for the last breaths of this life. I have found that there are lots of prayers for healing, or grief, but we don’t often consider how we will leave this life. I wrote this prayer as a prayer for a loved one, however, it can easily be converted into a prayer for oneself. Please feel free to use this and any of our content in services, prayer groups etc., just remember to link it back to us!

Dear God,

I (we) ask that you make the last breath of my (our) loved one peaceful and pure.
Let them be filled with your divine love and wisdom.
Let their final breath be like a river meeting a stream,
as they end this life and are joined with the divine spirit of the universe.
I pray that their last breath resonates in the hearts of those they have loved,
and that no strife or hurt is done unto those loved ones with the final breath.
Above all, let their last breath honor the life they have lived,
and bring acceptance for its end.